


what dreams may come

by RaineyDay



Series: Febuwhump 2021 [18]
Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Hallucinations, Nightmares, Sleep Deprivation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-24
Updated: 2021-02-24
Packaged: 2021-03-15 10:42:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,593
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29682753
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RaineyDay/pseuds/RaineyDay
Summary: Febuwhump day 11: HallucinationsAngus just couldn't stand the nightmares anymore. It wasn't supposed to get this bad.
Relationships: Angus McDonald & Taako, IPRE Crew | Starblaster Crew & Angus McDonald
Series: Febuwhump 2021 [18]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2138502
Comments: 2
Kudos: 17





	what dreams may come

**Author's Note:**

> based on a true story! from my childhood. I made the dumb mistake that I now inflict on poor Ango.

Angus couldn't stand the nightmares any longer.

He'd had them over and over since the day of Story and Song, and it was exhausting. It was hard to get any rest when you spent the whole night tossing and turning and terrified. He would wake up feeling as though he hadn't gotten any sleep at all, and it was starting to feel like a waste of time to even try to sleep.

He thought of it in terms of practicality in order to avoid the truth: that he was deeply, truly afraid of them.

He knew that they were only nightmares. Not real, and incapable of hurting him.

But they still felt so real when they were happening. He never knew in that moment if he was dreaming or not, if it even occurred to him to guess that it might not be real. He would hours absolutely miserable and caught in his own mind, and he was sick of it.

He couldn't just- stop sleeping, obviously. But he found himself staying up later and later every night, resting his eyes more than truly sleeping, startling awake at the slightest indication that his dreams were about to take a turn for the worst.

It was affecting his ability to function during the day, he knew, but it wasn't like trying to sleep was letting him function any better.

He had to figure out some kind of solution, but he was just so tired. He couldn't think.

Maybe it would help to not be alone at night. But how was he supposed to ask for that kind of help? He didn't want to burden his family by demanding someone stay with him until he fell asleep. They had their own sleep schedules to maintain after all.

And he wasn't a baby. He shouldn't need his family members to put him to bed every night like a toddler.

But he couldn't sleep without nightmares. He had nightmares about the Hunger, about what could have happened if they hadn't won. He had nightmares about the century, seeing his family members hurting and suffering for so long. He had nightmares about the relics, about their dangerous powers, and about what had been so horrible as to drive his family members- whom he knew to be largely decent people- to be willing to create such horrible things.

He didn't want to talk about it with his family. He knew that they would understand, for the most part, but it felt wrong to talk about.

He could handle it himself.

-

Angus couldn't sleep, once again, so he decided to pull out a book instead. It wouldn't be the first time that he'd spent the night reading instead of sleeping, and at least this way he wouldn't be bored. At least this way, he couldn't be stuck in his own thoughts for hours on end, waiting for the sun to rise.

After a while, he heard footsteps outside of his bedroom door. He tilted his head curiously. A lot of his family members were elsewhere for the night, and the ones who were here were all asleep already. Or so he'd thought anyway.

His bedroom was at the end of the hallway, so he'd expected whoever it was to open his door. There wasn't really anything else up over here for them to be doing.

But the door never opened.

Angus stood up, going to his door and opening it himself, but when he looked down the hallway, he saw no one.

That was- weird.

Maybe whoever it was had decided not to bother him. Maybe his mind was playing tricks on him. It was late enough and he was tired enough for either to be a valid possibility.

He went back to bed. The noise came back.

Something was very wrong here, he just knew it.

As he was trying to figure out what his next move should be, the footsteps started coming faster and faster, pounding down the hallway to his bedroom.

He heard howls and claws scratching and something screaming.

This couldn't be real. Angus was sure of it. Because if it was real, he would already be dead.

They screamed his name. They were looking for him.

It was just his mind playing tricks on him. It had to be. He was smart enough to know better than to believe that any of this was real.

But he couldn't go to sleep. He couldn't risk it, on the off-chance that he was wrong. And that was when you ignored the fact that he would never get to sleep with his body so keyed up and anxious.

Every instinct in his body was telling him to run, and it didn't matter that he was certain this was imaginary, he couldn't fight his instincts enough to relax when there were monsters outside his room howling his name and threatening him.

Maybe if he walked out into the hallway, proved to himself that there was nothing truly there, then he could relax. He could get to sleep.

He wasn't even afraid of the nightmares anymore, not when the alternative was this. This was at least, if not more terrifying than the nightmares had ever been, and if it continued, it would feel a lot longer, spending the hours until the dawn conscious instead of dipping into and out of deep sleep.

That's assuming that it would even stop when the morning came. It couldn't be _healthy_ to be hearing things like this, and there was no guarantee that it would stop without rest.

But much as he tried to convince himself of the logic of that plan, he couldn't make himself move. He was too scared. What kind of idiot walked toward the sounds of monsters? No matter how unlikely to be real they seemed?

When he finally managed to stand, it was on shaking legs. He stepped toward the pounding footsteps, and they began to laugh cruelly and hysterically.

He pushed the door open, and there was nothing there. His beating heart did not slow.

He screamed, as loud as he could manage, and ran back to his bed.

They were following him, they were following him, they were following him.

He curled up under the covers and buried his face in his knees, desperate to sleep. He'd knock himself unconscious if he thought it would work at this point.

They were coming for him. He could hear them howling and laughing, screaming for him, whispering his name in his ears, telling him that they were coming, that he couldn't escape.

He sobbed as the door to his room burst open. It's not real, it's not real, it's not real.

"Angus? Pumpkin, what's wrong?" Taako's voice exclaimed over him, and Angus was too scared to look up at him, certain that he would shift and change before his eyes if he did so.

When Angus said nothing and didn't move, Taako forced him to sit, pulling him to him, half-rocking Angus back and forth and frantically shushing him.

As Angus finally looked up, he noticed that Taako looked completely panicked and uncomfortable, clearly out of his depth in the situation.

It was real. He was real. Nothing was going to hurt him.

Angus melted into the hold, mumbling, "I couldn't sleep because I was too scared of the nightmares and I think I slept so little that I'm hallucinating."

"What?" Taako asked. "Ango, how does that even happen? Like, you have to be hella sleep-deprived to start hallucinating."

"I knoooow," Angus whined. "It was stupid."

"Sure was," Taako snorted, before a more serious, worried look came over his face. "Why didn't you say anything?"

"Didn't want to bother you," Angus said, fighting a yawn and failing, tearing up with how hard the yawn hit.

"Would rather you bother me than let this happen," Taako mumbled, squeezing his arms around him in a quick hug. Then, as if recoiling from the emotional honesty, "Way more of a bother to wake me up in the middle of the night by screaming like that, boychik."

"I'm sorry," Angus mumbled, his limbs going slack as the adrenaline wore off.

"You should be. You scared the shit out of me," Taako said, half scolding, half joking, and Angus smiled, too tired to laugh.

He could already feel himself slipping into a light doze as Taako held him.

"Don't ever be ashamed of nightmares, mijo, okay? Just means you survived some shit," Taako said.

"Mhmm," Angus mumbled in agreement, and he wasn't sure when exactly his eyes had closed, but they were definitely closed now.

"I got ya, pumpkin," Taako assured. "We all do."

-

Taako did not like having emotional conversations. They all knew that. Therefore, all the Birds and co. knew that whatever Taako called a Family Meetingtm for had to be about Angus. The kid was the only one that Taako would do something like that for, instead of just participating in someone else's meeting, or nagging everybody else about whatever he felt needed to be discussed until someone else handled it for him.

Angus was notably not present at the meeting, which nobody understood until Taako explained that he was still sleeping- explained everything that Angus had admitted to him the night before.

It was no trouble to set up a rotation of family to stay up with Angus until he fell asleep. They had enough family members to cover the whole week and then some.

It was no trouble at all. That's just was family does for each other.


End file.
